← The Tech Translator with Parent ProTech
The Tech Translator with Parent ProTech
The Mediatrician’s #1 Rule for Tech and Kids (It’s Not What You Think)
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- [00:00]
A
Joshua. It's Joshua from Parent Protect. And today we're at the Boston Children's Hospital. We just sat down with Dr. Michael Rich. He founded the Digital Wellness Lab and the Clinic for Interactive Media and Internet Disorders. He spent his career studying how media and tech is affecting our youth. And he has loads of tips for you as a parent so you can know how to protect your kids online and most importantly, how to lead out of joy and not fear. Stay tuned. There's lots of practical tips and really great insights in this one. It's really not a tech problem that we face.
- [00:36]
B
It's a people problem. This is not going to go away. We are descended from hunter gatherers. What kept us alive was that we were distractible. And then one generation got told, sit down, shut up and listen to that person in the front of the room.
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A
Yeah.
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B
We found to date about 127 different names for what's going on. We are asking the tech companies to parent our children. Will kids get hurt? Absolutely. I would much rather fix a broken arm than a broken spirit. As a parent, sit down next to him or her and play the game with them.
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A
If you're not ready to have these conversations, they're not ready for a smartphone.
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B
You gotta model the behavior you want to see in your kid. This is and always will be an ongoing work in progress.
- [01:19]
A
We are in the city that shaped Paul Revere, jfk, Mark Zuckerberg, even for a short stint of time, the Dunk Kings and some of America's best medical minds. And I'm honored to be sitting beside a pioneer pediatricians and Dr. Michael Rich. Hope I can call you that. Yes, Dr. Rich, I'd love to go into your full resume, but we'd be here a while. But just to give the overview, you've spent your career started with 12 years as a filmmaker, which is especially interesting, ranging from Japan to the US Even with Francis Coppola. And then you came back to Boston for medical school. And since then you've studied everything from adolescent development to media addiction, public health. You founded the Digital Wellness Lab here at Boston Children's Hospital, the clinic for interactive media and Internet addiction. Am I getting that disorder, Internet disorder?
- [02:12]
B
Because I'm going to argue with you that we found that an addiction is not a good description of what's going on.
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A
And I read your book and you talked about it so much.
- [02:22]
B
Clearly you didn't pay attention.
- [02:23]
A
Clearly, clearly. I'm glad you should be leading this. You teach at Harvard Med, Harvard School of Public Health. What I really love is your Focus is you want to see kids build a healthy relationship with tech and with all the challenges that come with it. And you challenge parents to lead out of joy and not fear. You say, we need to bring back boredom, which I love. You're an author of this book, which we're going to talk about a lot today. The Media Attrition's Guide. It's a book that I recommend. Every parent educator in anyone within the vicinity of a child needs to read.
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B
And it's kind of fun to read for anybody.
- [02:58]
A
Yeah, it truly is.
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B
I tell lots of stories about kids.
- [03:01]
A
I don't have kids yet. I'm preparing for that phase in life and I still found so much value and even conversation starters with my wife and I from your book, when we have a kid. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What sets you apart and what sets Dr. Rich apart is you're not just doing research. You're in the exam room. You're helping kids and families face the challenges that come with screens and tech. You're not here to shame. Your work is hopeful, healing, and, yes. Joyful.
- [03:29]
B
And fun.
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A
And fun. Yes. And of the many titles you carry, I wanna lean into the mediatrition today. So thank you, Dr. Rich. This is such an excitement for our team.
- [03:41]
B
Well, thank you for partnering with me and getting the word out.
- [03:44]
A
Yes, sir. And I will say personally, just a personal note, it's really great to be here. Haven't been back to Boston Children's since 2011 when I came as a patient. So this feels like a full circle moment for me individually, too.
- [03:56]
B
Obviously, we did a good enough job that we came back.
- [03:58]
A
I'm walking. Yeah. Let's jump into some of the issues. It can be very easy to become overwhelmed, I think, by the data that we hear on the news, whether that's our former surgeon general highlighted research linking three or more hours a day on a screen to double the risk of things like anxiety or depression. We hear most kids are encountering porn online around the age of 12, if not younger. The FBI says there's 50,000 predators active every single day. The average teen spending between eight and nine hours on a screen for entertainment. So we hear all this, and it is very easy to step back, to be afraid. What I think I've learned the longer I've been at Parent protech is the fear mindset is only going to take us so far. And inherently, we are an organization. We are pro tech. We think there's a lot of redemptive aspects and you share that focus. So starting your career as a filmmaker how did that shape the philosophy and the way that you look at tech and how you're looking for the redemptive aspects, not just trying to stoke up fear.
- [05:01]
B
It was actually the redemptive aspects that drew me to film in the first place because I saw film as a powerful way to change hearts and minds. And that odyssey led me to Japan, where I worked as assistant director to Akira Kurosawa, the maker of Seven Samurai, which, if you haven't seen, I highly recommend because it is simultaneously the best action film and the best anti war film ever made.
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A
And I studied film in school, and I haven't. I've heard about it so much, and I wanted to. I wanted us to watch it last night, but we didn't get this theater. We will, we will.
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B
I'll give you another one, though.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Ikiru. It means to live.
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A
Yeah.
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B
That's actually my favorite film. It's a much quieter film. It is not a samurai film, but I'll leave it to you to discover it.
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A
Okay. Okay.
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B
At any rate, I was drawn to film, really, by the great films not only of Kurosawa and some of his contemporaries in Japan, Mizuguchi and Ozu, but a lot of the European films that came out of the French wave and out of Germany and out of Poland, and quite frankly, came back from Japan after working at the knee of the master. Worked with Francis Coppola a little bit on both the international release version of Kagemusha, the film I worked on, and on One from the Heart, which was his last studio film, after which the unions busted him and he went off to Napa to grow grapes. At any rate, I grew discouraged by that experience, that my dream of changing hearts and minds by making film would not come to pass if someone as great as Francis Coppola could get busted like that. I guess I had an early midlife crisis. And the only other thing that I was interested in was medicine, oddly enough. And many. Well, it may be not such a pivot.
- [07:06]
A
Yeah.
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B
Because as many of the doctors, the professors of medicine that interviewed me for medical school, they often asked me, so this is entirely different. Why would you give all of that glamour and et cetera for this? And to my mind, the through line is, are both skills or vocations that require a lot of knowledge, a lot of technical knowledge that you then use to get intimate to what it means to be human. Right. So in film, you're writing a story. You're telling a story of humans and how they interact. In medicine, I'm listening to stories I'm hearing people's stories and I am decoding them for how things could be better for them. And so for me, it was a single arc of sort of understanding the human condition and also being able to bring a set of skills to bear to actually move the needle a little bit to the positive.
- [08:10]
A
Yeah, you're talking about the human condition and the humanity piece that you. I think that's what you capture in your book. It's not a list of do's and don'ts. It's not a guide of, hey, here are six simple steps you need to follow. It's more so a broader principle of building a family culture, of encouraging communication, of getting in those digital spaces, encouraging parents to get in those digital spaces that their kids are in. And for me, it's very much a mindset shift. So could you help us? For those parents that are stuck in the framework of screen time, of limiting, of controlling restrictions, how does the mindset shift to. To what you suggest?
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B
First of all, we have to recognize and frankly, try to curb our natural instinct to find a binary answer to a complex and nuanced question.
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A
It's not black and white humans.
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B
Absolutely not. Humans are very complex. They're very individual. And that's in fact, what makes us interesting to each other, our differences, the ways that we can help each other see the world differently, understand things differently. And so what drives this idea of, you know, cut it off or restrict it or not till a certain age or whatever is driven by that binary thing that maybe if I can just find a simple answer, everything will be okay? The reality is that this is not going to go away. These kids need to learn to live well, in both senses of the word, well, in the digital ecosystem they are living in. One of the mistakes we adults make too is thinking about the online and offline worlds. You know, reality and irl.
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A
Yeah, exactly.
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B
Online, guess what? It's one environment for them. And they move seamlessly between the digital and the physical. And as a result, none of us can actually measure screen time anymore. You know, screen time was an artifact of the days when it was television. That was the only screen we were looking at. And the shows started at a certain time and ended at a certain time, and you could actually measure it. Now we move in and out of. Of digital environments constantly. And the reality also is that the research shows it is not how much time you're spending on screens, but what you are spending that time doing on screens. It really is something that we need to take more responsibility for. We need to be more mindful in our use of these screens. And we also cannot beat ourselves up for making mistakes. We will always make mistakes. The other piece of this is that we can't have rules that we set in place now that will hold us in the future. Because we are dealing with an incredibly rapidly evolving ecosystem. And what we find that in research we are following is essentially three moving targets. The first being, I love that, the human being from our development, infancy, toddlerhood, school, age, adolescence, adulthood.
- [11:29]
A
So we're constantly growing and changing. That's.
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B
And we're constantly growing and changing at different rates and in different ways.
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A
That's why you say there's no.
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B
I won't give an age range.
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A
Yes, yes.
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B
Because think about the kids in your life. All 8 year olds are not the same. All 13 year olds are not the same. And one of the real problems I have with setting an age is not just the infinite variation of individuals, but these numbers are set relatively arbitrarily on a so called neurotypical child. I hate the word neurotypical because in my experience we are all neurodiverse. And in fact that diversity is really what makes us interesting to each other. Think of the people, you know, who are incredible musicians but can't kick a soccer ball for the life of them, or amazing mathematicians and can't have a conversation. Sure, right. That's what makes us interesting. That's what gives us the texture of life, you know. And so the first moving target.
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A
Okay, so human development, the second moving target.
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B
Second moving target is the environment that is both affecting their development and reflecting it because it is not just watching television anymore. They are in a constant dialogue with the digital space. They are creating digital media as well as consuming digital media. And so I think that that's a really important thing to be aware of, is that there is this ongoing dialogue, if you, between the digital space and the individual young person. And that shapes the third moving target, which is the change in all of our behavior. Because we have smartphones in our pockets, we have screens as a society, often in virtually every environment we're in, we have wearables, watches, et cetera. I think that we just have to be constantly aware of those things. Not afraid of them, but. But observe them and work with them. I think the whole effort to restrict and hold off at a certain age or whatever, first of all will never work. But it also isn't responsive to the way humans behave. As much as I love the effort toward developing age appropriate digital guidelines, I have two problems with that. The first is age, which we've already talked about, because age is not the same, but appropriate is a values leading word. And what's appropriate here in Boston may not be appropriate in Arkansas or other places. I think we have to respect the cultures of places. So what we talk about, because it's actually something we can measure, is what is developmentally optimal. And not only does that mean that we are looking at how this young person is changed and effective in positive as well as negative ways at this stage of their development, but it's also inclusive of all those so called neurodivergent kids. It isn't othering them, it doesn't make them different or less than it says. This is part of it because they're wonderful tech tools for kids who are on the autism spectrum, for example. And so we don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater here and ignore all the incredible potential that tech has. But also we don't want to ignore the potential pitfalls as well.
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A
Yeah. So what I'm gathering and what I think just keeps coming back to me is it's really not a tech problem that we face, it's a people problem. It's a people problem.
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B
Absolutely. As Pogo, that old cartoon, once said, we have met the enemy, and he is us.
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A
We've met the enemy. And what I really appreciate about your book is I think the principles in here transcend the tech.
- [15:33]
B
Absolutely. And that's quite intentional because any time you put something on paper like in a book, it's sort of set in stone and it's about a moving target.
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A
Right.
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B
And so I actually divide the book, as I think, you know, into four sections. The first being what, which is what is going on in terms of the developing child and that screens in her or his life. The second is so what? Where it addresses all the things that people are worried about, whether it's violence or substance use or eating disorders or going down the rabbit hole of the Internet. And I deal with all of those with good, solid scientific information. And then the third part is now what that's looking forward to Gen AI and the metaverse and however they may evolve and realiz that we know a lot about screens, even from the days of television, that we can extrapolate into the future so we can lean into this with confidence and say we're going to do our best.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And the other thing I actually say to the parents is, you're not going to be perfect.
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A
There's Grace.
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B
Start.
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A
Take a breath.
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B
Yes. Start with forgiving yourself because you're going to screw up. And guess what? Your kids will be okay.
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A
Your kids will be okay. That's a good. From a pediatrician. Yeah.
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B
Kids are amazingly resilient. And you know, at Boston Children's Hospital, I take care of some kids who've been horrifically abused. And yet they're wonderful kids on the inside. I take care of kids who come in, in wheelchairs with a blanket on their lap, not because they can't walk, but because they're in leg shackles and handcuffs. Right. They're coming detention, but they're still 16 year old kids. And when you're there and they know that you are listening to them, responding to them with respect, they're still kids. You know, these are people that other people are terrified of. Call me crazy. I like them.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And then I would say the fourth part of this book is actually for those who don't necessarily have the time or want to review. And it's actually called a Digital Wellness primer in a sense of ages and stages. So what's going on for the infant, what's going on for the toddler, et cetera, going through life. So it's a bunch of bullet points, like tips.
- [18:07]
A
That one I was just like underline and I was like, I gotta stop because I'm gonna use up my highlighter. Yeah, exactly. It is very accessible for some. Even if you don't read the whole book. Jump to that.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And that's where even the family digital wellness guide that the team's developed here at the Digital Wellness Lab is when everywhere we go, we recommend families, we're like, hey, go look at this. Because it has a bit of the research, but it also makes it very practical for you.
- [18:34]
B
Yeah. The bottom line is my job as a pediatrician at large is how do I translate complex medical, biological, psychological clients into feasible action steps for everybody? You don't need to be educated. And I also try to reassure parents that their inst. Instincts to parent are perfectly fine. What we have to understand is the environment in which we're applying them now. That's all. So I really approach this as an environmental health issue in a sense, almost like air pollution. Yes. We should be working at cleaning up the air and getting the factories not to spew stuff out. But at the same time, we've got to raise our kids right now. We've got to let them run and play and breathe with the air we've got. So it's this combination of optimism for the future, powering activism to make it better. But Also, pragmatism of this is what we got. Let's do the best we have with it rather than be fearful or feel guilty about it.
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A
And you mentioned your patients, so many that you work with at the clinic. In your book, you talk about how at the end of the day, tech isn't the root issue. I think we hammered that one home. But so many of them use tech as a way to treat something underlying. There's a quote specifically that you have. Among the hundreds of children and adolescents we have seen, we have yet to see one who did not have an underlying psychological issue that they were avoiding by using Internet active media to distract and soothe themselves. Could you speak to that? Because so many parents that I work with see tech is the problem.
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B
Right.
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A
And I think you're highlighting it's not on the surface.
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B
It looks like that for all the world, these kids are staring at their smartphones for hours on end or at their gaming consoles.
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A
Yeah. I was like, let's put some labels to it. This is. Your child's stuck in Fortnite. Minecraft won't put it down.
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B
Right. Exactly. And also they're stuck with the paradigm that actually was started by people in my community in the 1990s. Up. This is an addiction. Okay. And that they are addicted to screens the way people are addicted to alcohol or opioids, et cetera. So here's what we've found is that in fact, in every case, there is one or more of four underlying psychological issues going on. And often it's in multiples. They are are attention deficit disorders, either hyperactive or distracted, social anxiety, Autism spectrum disorder, and depression. Now, many people say, oh, but it causes anxiety. It causes depression. In actual fact, what we found is that the anxiety and depression almost always, if not always, preceded their use of screens. And they're going to the screens to feel more in control. Let me give you an example. A kid who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder spends his whole day in class not keeping up, feeling like he's not with it, he's not understanding it, he's feeling stupid. And other kids tease him about it or whatever. Can't even hold a conversation sometimes in the playground because of the attention piece. Goes home, sits down, starts playing Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto and he's really good. He kicks butt.
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A
In fact, it's in control.
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B
Distractibility is a relative strength in this environment.
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A
Sure.
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B
I actually see ADHD as a normal variant because if you think about it, we are descended from hunter gatherers that crawled out of the cave in the morning in search of food and trying not to become someone else's food. And what kept us alive was that we were distractible and we were hypervigilant. So generations after generations passed this down because they all survived. And then one generation got told, sit down, shut up, and listen to that person in the front of the room.
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A
Yeah. For hours on end, hey, look at the bird.
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B
You know? And so I don't see ADHD as a diagnosis or a problem so much as it is how we have, you know, not evolved as fast as the environment we're forcing us into. But we do have technology, you know, pharmacology, to correct and readjust that. That's just one example. But let's think about this addiction model. Cause I'm really concerned about it. First of all, when you use the word addiction or addict, it drives parents and kids away from care, right? Because we all know what addicts are like. And my kid's just a pain in the butt. My kid's not an addict. Right? Until they look for all the world like an addict. As the parents imagine it, you know, they're staying up all night gaming. They're not getting out of bed in the morning, they're dropping out of school, you know, et cetera, et cetera. But let's think about what addiction is as we imagine it. And addiction is a social construction, not a medical construction. It is not a diagnostic word that we use, but it's use of a pleasurable but unnecessary substance, whether it be alcohol or nicotine or cocaine or opioids, that is not necessary for life. It is driven by physiologic drivers of I want to feel good, I want to feel high, and then I don't want to feel withdrawal, I don't want to feel crappy. Our therapeutic goal with addictions is abstinence. You don't need alcohol to survive. You don't need cocaine. You stop it because it's causing more harm and it's not contributing good. We can't live without interactive media now. We need to be able to communicate with each other, to learn, to teach, to do commerce. Everything we do is interactive media now, truly. So it is use of, overuse or dysfunctional use of a necessary resource that is not driven by physiologic drivers, but by psychological drivers that the screens are meeting the need of those psychological issues that kids are having. So we actually see this as much more akin to the most common eating disorder, binge eating disorder. This is eating to fill that empty hole inside you that is not physical, but is psychological. Our therapeutic goal is not stop eating, but self regulation. And that's our approach at simaid, the clinic for interactive media and Internet disorders.
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A
And this. So this different path apart or different terminology, you call it problematic interactive media use? Yes, correct.
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B
Right. Because. Well, here's an interesting little tidbit. In our research, we found to date about 127 different names for what's going on, depending on what that researcher was studying. So for some it's a smartphone problem, for some it's a porn problem, for some it's a gaming problem. These are not separated by devices. So if a parent takes away a gaming console, the kid is perfectly happy to go online and watch other gamers games. So we see that gaming, social media use, pornography and what we call information or video binging on YouTube, Reddit, whatever are part and parcel of the same thing. And it is not the device or the platform or the software so much as it's the interactivity that drives us. Right. That this is different than watching television. This feels like someone or even some bot out there is paying attention to me and responding to me. And it makes me feel alive, and it makes me feel alive in an environment that is a whole lot easier than classroom or the playground or the world because it's more controllable.
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A
I'm in the comfort of my bedroom, on my screen.
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B
Absolutely. I can turn it off anytime. Although there's so many hooks in there that I never want to turn it off.
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A
Yeah. So let's talk about this. We're so inundated with all this interactive media and what a lot of us are missing, I think children and adults, is boredom. You talk about how we need to quote, bring back boredom. There's even a quote in your book I love where you wrote, boredom is the crucible of imagination, creativity and innovation. All of us, children and adults alike, too often forfeit the opportunity to think the new when we default to whatever game, meme, text or advertisement happens to be on our phones. If you're a parent, how do you navigate this?
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B
First of all, I'll roll back and say you gotta model the behavior you wanna see in your kid. Right. I talk in the three M's about five M's total.
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A
Five M's, that's right. That is right.
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B
But three M's that you can do to ensure digital wellness in your child. And the first is model the behavior you want to see in your child. Don't be staring at that all important email from your boss on your phone while telling your Kid to turn off the video game to them. That's the height of hypocrisy. Understand that your child listens to about 1% of what you say and 100% of what you do. And so if being an adult, being that amazing person who's your parent means staring at a screen, I'm going to stare at a screen. There must be something there for me. And you know what? It'll make the parents happier, too, to put the phone down. One of the things that I do fairly subversively with my adolescent patients when their parents are out of the room is what can your parents do better?
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A
That's good.
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B
Almost always the first thing out of their mouths is, pay more attention to me. Wow, that's powerful. Right? So I talked to parents. Instead of pursuing killer apps, they should be pursuing their killer bees.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And the killer bees are be mindful in our use of screens, but also in our mindful non use of screens.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Put them down. Don't have them at the dinner table. Definitely don't have them in the bedroom. Sometimes put them down and just go for a walk or play catch in the backyard or do something other than that. Because we can no longer measure screen time. The best way we can control this is by consciously putting the screens away. Because the only real issue with screen time, just as a construct, is what you are not doing because you're on a screen. Wow. It's not that opportunity cross. Exactly. And so that's the first M. And I can go into the other two and then we'll get back to.
- [30:25]
A
Yeah, please do.
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B
But I will say that the killer bees are be mindful, be balanced, and that mindfulness leads to the balance. Be bored, and most importantly, be present. And.
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A
Yeah, I love kids.
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B
Right. So what's the deal with boredom? Interestingly, there was a lowly patent officer about a hundred years ago in Switzerland who used to walk to work beside the river and study the eddies and swirls of the water, stamp a bunch of meaningless bureaucratic papers, go back home and go upstairs and write up a little thing called the theory of relativity.
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A
And we all know his name now, right?
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B
Absolutely.
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A
Albert Einstein.
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B
Albert Einstein. And. And in the space of one year, he wrote the four major papers of theoretical physics that physicists since then have desperately tried to disprove and have not been able to. It is called by science historians the miraculous year. Late in his life, when he was asked, you weren't in an academy, you weren't in a laboratory, you didn't have colleagues to discuss this how did you do this? He said, because I was bored. My mind could travel through time and space. I think we give away a lot when we get on an elevator and pull out our phones and look at whatever's on the news or whatever's out there. I think we just have to be more conscious of what we are giving away. And I'll tell you, walked out of the hospital a few months back after a really hard clinical session. Some of these kids are really struggling. And I often feel like I'm giving soul transfusions to these kids, trying to give them some hope and give them something to work on, to find themselves. Because after all, isn't that what's going on in adolescence anyway? You're trying to figure out who you are. So I walked out on the street and turned to my right toward where my car was parked, and I looked up and there was a brilliant sunset. And all of that exhaustion, all of that kind of sense of hopelessness almost, that fell away from me with this beautiful sunset. And I looked around me and everyone was staring at their hundreds of people on the street and they missed it. Right. We give that away. We give that away. Boredom works for creativity and imagination, not just because it has clear mind space to work in, but that mind space gets a little uncomfortable. And so we want to fill it with something.
- [33:08]
A
Yeah, let me do something. Let me get to that screen.
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B
Exactly.
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A
What about for a parent who might be over scheduling their child? They need to be in a sport. At least this is what I hear sometimes. And they also need to learn the violin. They also need to be fluent in Mandarin. But the time they're a teen, are they over scheduling?
- [33:29]
B
Potentially some are, but these are only the affluent parents. I think we have to recognize that there are a lot of parents who don't have the means to think about that. They may be single parenting, they may be double income parenting. Some of these parents can't even get to parent teacher meetings in schools because they're working those hours, things of that nature. So I don't want this to be just for the NPR crowd.
- [33:57]
A
Exactly.
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B
I think we have to think about parenting in ways that are accessible to everybody. And I do worry about those parents who feel that what we do around screens is a luxury, not something that enters into their hierarchy of need. But they're the ones who are going to work and handing a tablet to their child as the electronic babysitter.
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A
Right.
- [34:26]
B
At least they're not out in the streets. They're not getting in trouble. They're not getting Hurt. I think we all have to be conscious that there is a real problem with just leaving them unsupervised on the screen. And so we're asking the tech companies to parent our children. Essentially. The tech companies have algorithms that are driven around sales, whether it's selling a product or an idea, and that creates rabbit holes with echo chambers that go down.
- [35:01]
A
They're incentivized to capture our attention.
- [35:03]
B
Absolutely. And part of our work at the Digital Wellness Lab is to try to get the tech companies to recognize that if they are going to be able to sustain their business, which has grown meteorically, but will not continue to grow that way because we'll run out of people to sell to. Sure, they have to retain their customers, their consumers. If they are creating a product that harms its users, they're stuck in the dilemma of the tobacco companies, which is you have to replace those consumers all the time. And so what we are trying to bring our research to bear on is how can we help the tech companies recognize that the second bottom line is the wellness of their users, so that their users will continue to be healthy and trust them, et cetera, and use those products in ways that are moving them forward, not moving them backwards.
- [36:08]
A
So we talk about boredom. Can you also speak to free play?
- [36:11]
B
Absolutely.
- [36:12]
A
And the importance you say needs to be intrinsically motivated, open ended, self governed, so we don't just need time to be bored. But there's also this goes a step further and we need that space to. To create, to have that freedom. What does that look like?
- [36:28]
B
Go out into the backyard and don't come back till dinner. Right?
- [36:32]
A
Yeah.
- [36:33]
B
What do I do? I don't know. Figure it out. Right. That's the real value of free play. Because free play is how we learn to be human and be with other humans. It does need to be intrinsically motivated. Like let's pretend that tree is a fort. And you know, one of us will attack the fort, the other will defend the fort, this, that and the other will. Kids get hurt. Absolutely right. But you know, I would much rather fix a broken arm than a broken spirit. Right? Yeah, that's easy to fix. But a kid who does not have that imagination, that does not have that innate ability to play with another person and be responsive and reciprocal in interacting. I tagged you out. No, I wasn't out. I made it. You know, all that, that's the gist of.
- [37:28]
A
We need that.
- [37:28]
B
That's what's important. Right. And. And that's the stuff that will stick with us through our lives much More so than the cello lessons that we will dutifully do until mom gives up on us and decides that now I have to go to Mandarin class. Right? Yeah. I mean, kids benefit much more from free play. I'm not saying they shouldn't have cello lessons and shouldn't learn, but it should be part of the rich and diverse menu of experience we offer our kids. And unplanned stuff is really important because kids feel stressed now with their schedules of having to hit their marks.
- [38:09]
A
Yeah, it was so refreshing last weekend. My wife and I, we live in Houston, so warmer climate. We were at the pool and there was a group of middle schoolers that came. And at first I was like, oh, here we go. You know, I'm trying to have a relaxing afternoon and obnoxious hormone filled preteen. Exactly. Middle school boys even work. Oh, yeah, right.
- [38:31]
B
Worst of all, testosterone. And they.
- [38:35]
A
So at first I was slightly annoyed. I kept watching. They created a game with this ball that was like partially deflated, but in a matter of 20 minutes we had a full activity going. They did. And I'm just watching it take place and I'm like, wow. I would much rather than be doing this than be playing Fortnite right now. I think this is a much or
- [38:57]
B
even playing organized sports. Right. Because they have to be creative in the process. Now what do you do with it? A partially deflated ball. Right. It becomes something different than a ball. And I'm glad you got to see that because you know what? We're all capable of that.
- [39:15]
A
Yeah.
- [39:16]
B
But we need to have the space for that to happen in. We need to be in a pool, a bunch of friends, and a deflated ball. And now what do I do?
- [39:25]
A
Yeah, exactly. We need the margin, the environment when
- [39:29]
B
kids say, I'm bored. Third, what we should say is, excellent, let's get started. Or just excellent. They will naturally get started because they'll be so frustrated that we said excellent.
- [39:41]
A
Yeah. Hey, this is where some of the best work happens.
- [39:45]
B
Absolutely.
- [39:46]
A
We're talking about middle schoolers. Let's rewind a few years. When parents who are introducing media. One thing you really hammer home in your book is the idea that all media are educational. I think in the past we saw this caveat, especially on tv, whether this is as educational television or entertainment. But now it's like, hey, whether you are playing them a YouTube video or whether there's something on the screen in the background, they are learning something. Right. So what's the takeaway for a parent when you realize that all media are Educational.
- [40:16]
B
That's what draws us to media. Media, you know, as a concept, is really just a conduit for humans communicating to each other. Yeah, right. Whether it's a book or a movie or an interactive game of some sort, these are all media. What differs is what they teach and how well they teach it. Interactive media are arguably the best educational technology we've developed yet, because you can create a whole set of realities fueled by large language models, et cetera, but you are creating an environment, a set of conditions that are rewarded in some ways and, you know, punished in other ways. So we've got this incredibly powerful tool, but, you know, you can learn Mandarin from it, or you could learn to shoot terrorists. Right. And so, you know, obviously shooting terrorists sells way better than learning Mandarin. But I think we have to think in very deep ways, but also in very compassionate ways about what are they learning and what are they taking away from it. And I'm not saying that they should never play Call of Duty. What I am saying is, as a parent, sit down next to him or her and play the game with him. You will never have a prayer of winning. So just give up that idea. And that's what parents resist a little bit about what I call the second m mentoring them in the use of
- [41:54]
A
getting into the space certain way.
- [41:56]
B
And the reason I use the word mentor rather than teacher is we think of teaching as a one way transfer of information, teacher to student. Mentors learn as much from the mentee as the mentee learns from the mentor. Truly a dialogue that's going on. I've had parents tell me they dread the Internet talk more than the sex talk because correctly or incorrectly, they think they know something about sex, but they know their kid knows more than they do about that. So they don't want to get into that place where their kid is the expert. I say to them, this is really cool. Approach it not with fear, not with guilt or blame or shame. Approach it with curiosity. Learn that smartphone with your child and you will come across a porn site or something like that. And if you do that together, you are able to talk about it.
- [42:52]
A
Yeah.
- [42:53]
B
They are a decade or more away from having fully developed executive functions in their prefrontal cortex. Impulse control, future thinking, judgment, all that stuff. What we used to call the superego or conscience. But if you are there with them and you're not saying, oh, don't go there, oh, that's terrible, but asking them, how do you feel about that? Then when they on their own encounter a hate site or pornography or any of that stuff, they're not saying, oh my God, I have to hide this from mom and dad, you know, Cause I'll get busted or it's a bad thing. I've been bad so much as able to say, look at this mom or dad. This is weird. What does this mean? Because these kids are coming on pornography long before they're even sexually developed, before puberty, right? And it's confusing, it's scary, it's weird. And I've actually, actually taking care of kids who've really gotten stuck in their sexual development because of the kind of fiction that pornography portrays of what sex is. So I think that that's really important. And actually that mentorship where you are discussing from the get go and learning from them, it segues perfectly into the third M, which is monitor them. Be able to monitor them. And parents say, oh my God. Parents and kids push back against this the hardest, right? Because parents say, I don't have the time to game as much as he does or to be on social media as often as she is. But they need to be able to if they have their children's usernames and passwords. And yes, their kids will create finstas, right? Yeah, Fake Instagrams. We'll talk about that in a second. As long as parents are able to get into their children's digital lives, and it is a natural segue from this mentorship into their. Into the future, the kids will behave differently, just the way employees behave differently. If there's random drug testing in the workplace, it's the threat of it. The potential we if in the next 30 days my boss may ask me for urine. Same thing with the kids. If they know that mom or dad can observe them online, being snarky, whatever. And you keep the dialogue going and you can do it in light, easy ways like, wow, how would you feel if your friend said that to you online? Right? Because texting is a whole different thing than a conversation. It's asynchronous. You're not able to see a person's body language or facial expressions. You're not able to respond with empathy or to correct an error you made in communicating, whatever. So I think that having a presence in your child's digital life, which frankly, is as much as their life off screen, even more in many cases. And I think that's part of parenting in the 21st century. It just is.
- [46:12]
A
Those conversations are so essential and they should come first. And one question we get asked a lot is, what's the age for a smartphone? And I love the way you frame this, where you say if you're not ready to have these conversations, they're not ready for a smartphone.
- [46:27]
B
Right, Right. Exactly.
- [46:28]
A
As simple as that.
- [46:29]
B
Yeah. And you as a family unit are not ready. Right. I mean, in every case of the kids have gotten in trouble with it. It is not an isolated case or, or this kid. And none of the siblings and none of the parents. It's a family dynamics issue. And we have fallen into a bad habit of using these devices as distractions or as treats. And so one of the things I say about all these devices is this is not a toy. This is a power tool. This is a chainsaw. You can use a chainsaw to make wood sculptures and build all kinds of things. You can also cut your hand off with it, introduce these devices, these applications, these platforms, when you feel your child is responsible for it enough to handle it, can handle it with respect for themselves and others. Then sit next to them when they start, be there with them. Think of it like the way we teach kids to drive automobiles, right? When they need them, you know, when they can handle them responsibly. And still we sit white knuckled in the front seat while they learn to drive. And we don't teach them out of fear. We don't say, don't hit that tree, don't run over people. We teach them to drive and in the process, they learn to be safe and respectful and care for others.
- [47:53]
A
When talking about this in your book, you wrote that connectedness and communication with family have been shown to be among the single most important activities to improve and protect mental health.
- [48:02]
B
Health.
- [48:03]
A
You talk about the importance of family meals. You talk about having conversations in the car. It sounds so simple, but yet it truly has such a transformative power.
- [48:13]
B
It is simple and it's really, really hard. Yeah, the time, I mean, it's hard in part because we've developed other habits. And so it does mean kind of having some self discipline around. No devices at the dinner table that sit down. Family meal once a day is the single most important thing you can do, not just for their nutrition, but for their mental health as well. You're developing a culture of this is when I download the funny things that happen, the things that upset me, the things that pissed me off, and you share it with the people you're closest to and you trust the most. It is so important. And we have a long history of the ritual of breaking bread together. How important that is. I mean, even right to communion or mass in religion, right. It's about eating Drinking, but it's about doing it together in a way where you having a shared experience. So essential at meals, so essential not to have screens in the bedroom. But I think that the business about the car is really important. When you have something really hard to talk about with your kid, get in the car, strap them in, and drive somewhere.
- [49:32]
A
Yeah.
- [49:34]
B
It's not. I mean, kids, you're not having to make eye contact. Exactly. You're facing forward. You're isolated from the rest of the world. Right. It's sort of like a mini Vegas. What happens in this car stays in this car. Right. And it's much safer for the kids. Kid. And that's one of the reasons why I really discourage having a tablet or a phone going in the car, because that's a missed opportunity, you know, for, hey, what's going on? You know?
- [50:05]
A
Yeah, I. I think about my wife and I, Alexa and I. The. Some of the best conversations we have are on road trips.
- [50:11]
B
Right.
- [50:11]
A
Just open road and just conversations.
- [50:14]
B
Did you say your wife is named Alexa?
- [50:16]
A
She is. She is.
- [50:17]
B
Oh, that's really problematic, isn't it?
- [50:22]
A
She was before the Amazon Alexa, so I cling to that. But, yeah, she gets the jokes often.
- [50:27]
B
Oh, I'm sure, I'm sure. But I think there's a lovely irony about you talking about getting in the car, isolated, away from editing to talk with.
- [50:36]
A
Yeah. Yeah. If you didn't know, you'd say, wait, hold on.
- [50:40]
B
Yeah. Right.
- [50:41]
A
Okay. I want to take a hard pivot briefly and look at ads right now. I think nine out of 10 teens are on YouTube. According to Pew last year, seven out of 10 are on TikTok. We're inundated with creators and influencers, and it's a great. There's new. This new economy that's come up on the positive.
- [50:59]
B
The number one career destination of kids right now is to be an influencer.
- [51:04]
A
That's what they want.
- [51:05]
B
They want to be influenced. They don't even care what they're influencing about. They just want to be an influence.
- [51:09]
A
I want to have influence about what.
- [51:11]
B
What they ignore in that is basically that's. I'm going to be an advertiser.
- [51:16]
A
Exactly.
- [51:17]
B
I'm going to be Don Draper.
- [51:18]
A
Every logo is strategic.
- [51:20]
B
Oh, abs.
- [51:21]
A
And you use these three words that I love when in the right context, raise a cynic. And you talk about how, hey, you need to have conversations with your kids about really thinking twice about who is sharing that message and why are they trying to reach me with that? What's the strategy? What's going on behind the scenes. What is a conversation when you're talking to a parent about that? What does that look like?
- [51:44]
B
Some of them really resist the idea of raising a cynic. What I teach him though is to be digitally or media literate. Right now literacy is one of those kind of school marmy words. You know, read, write, arithmetic. But what literacy is truly about is being able to be a critical thinker and a critical communicator to others. And so on the simplest basis, I encourage them and, and encourage them to encourage their kids with every message. Who created this message? Understand that all messages are created. What we're doing right now is creating a message, right? Who created it? How do they want me to behave after receiving this message? What is included and what is not included in this message? How might someone of a different, different economic status, a different race, a different culture, a different language hear this? And it really is about building in cognitive dissonance so that when you go to a site wanting to learn something about health and it leads to dieting and it leads to be thinner and it leads to be kind of pro anorexia or pro eating disorder type of stuff, you have speed bumps internally that say, is there another way of looking at this? Is there another way of understanding this? Parents often say to me, net nanny all these things. What is the best software for protecting my child online? They say it's sitting between your kids ears. What you put in their head is what's going to protect them. Teach them the question. Question, question authority, question advertising, question. You right?
- [53:40]
A
Yeah.
- [53:40]
B
You know, I mean, in many ways that's ultimately what we want them to do, which is especially during adolescence, is moving discipline from outside in to inside out. How you behave and how you encourage them to behave also entails, you know, question what I say too. I'm imperfect. You know, there's an old Buddhist saying, when you meet Buddha on the road, kill him. Right? Which is don't buy everything that's handed to you. You know, and frankly, we are in real trouble as a society right now because we don't have enough critical thinking.
- [54:21]
A
Many parents we work with, they say maybe they're already in a situation where their child, they've found them viewing pornography online. They found they, they can't get them off the gaming cons. They ask, am I too far gone? Is it too late? What would you say?
- [54:38]
B
It's never too late. Kids are all potential. I've seen lots and lots of kids who have suffered terrible abuse, far worse than sitting in front of a gaming console. For six or eight or ten hours. Kids have an inherent drive to be successful, to be healthy. And frankly, they have an inherent empathetic drive. One of the things you'll see is in a newborn. Newborn nursery in your future. But in a newborn nursery, one baby will have a wet diaper and start crying. And then the babies around that baby will start crying, too. Not because they're wet, but because they feel empathy for the crying. In many ways, our education system and, you know, our work system, which is built on a sort of a Machiavellian competition, kind of beats that empathy out of people. Unfortunately, what we forget until we are in crisis is that we're all in this together. We don't get better by denying somebody else something. We get better by practicing random acts of kindness.
- [55:50]
A
Sure, sure. 10 seconds with any parent, what would you say to them?
- [55:55]
B
Hug your child and have fun with. With them.
- [55:57]
A
Wow, that's five. I mean, that was excellent. Yeah.
- [56:01]
B
I mean, I mean, ultimately, we had these kids because we wanted to meet these new, unique individuals. Allow yourself to be surprised by them.
- [56:13]
A
Yeah.
- [56:13]
B
Especially by those things that are not like you or that you didn't expect. Don't immediately try to force them into a pattern, but see where they lead us, because you know what? They're going to be pushing our wheelchairs before we. Right. And so we have to see them as leaders that they will be, and they're all potential. I would also say to those parents, send them to me. I will help you have fun with them. They are not lost. Maybe they're wandering, but frankly, we are all wandering. We're all figuring this out as we go along. This is and always will be an ongoing work in progress. We will not achieve perfection, but we can keep approaching it. And that is, in fact, a goal for us as individuals, but for us as society and as parents, et cetera, in every role we play is, how can we be a little better today? And frankly, that's what took me from film into medicine is that I ultimately grew frustrated with the metrics that were being used to judge my work. To make, you know, make media was not based on what I wanted to do, which is change hearts and minds, but as what would Ka Ching make the cash register flow.
- [57:44]
A
Yeah.
- [57:46]
B
And I think a little bit also was getting a little older and not having the grandiose idea that I could change the world. But to be able to lay my head on the pillow at night and say, I made it a little bit better today. Yeah.
- [58:01]
A
One step.
- [58:02]
B
You know, this kid had an ear Infection. And I treated it and I took care of it. You don't need more than that. You know, if we can make the world a little bit incrementally better with everything we do, it will be a better place, you know? And as Margaret Mead said, never doubt the possibility of two or three people changing the world because indeed, nobody else has or has. Right?
- [58:25]
A
Yeah.
- [58:25]
B
It's not been huge movements. It's been individuals and individuals relationships with each other that have made changes. Wow.
- [58:33]
A
Mic drop. That's. A lot of parents are hesitant to get in these digital spaces with their kids. Right. It's. It's scary. It's new. And so I thought, hey, if Dr. Rich and I can do just something cringy.
- [58:47]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [58:47]
A
Like. Like a slang. Say a slang word or do a quick activity that the teens that we work with tell us not to do. But the spaces comes from the space that they're living in, because we're gonna
- [58:59]
B
make the kids cringe, too.
- [59:00]
A
We're gonna make them cringe. But I'm like, if we can do it, maybe some parent out there will say, oh, I can do that too. If they're willing to look like that. There's this term we hear. It's called mewing. Okay. It's just one motion. It's a slang term. It's all over social media and what this is. Teachers even tell us students will do this to get out of talking in class. But it's this one activity it comes from. You're supposed to push your tongue gets through your mouth, and it's supposed to, you know, strengthen this area over time. But then students have this activity. They'll do. Well, they're trying to look cool, and you'll kind of flex your jaw. You push. Your tongue gets the roof of your mouth, and you go. And you point to your jawline, and you're showing off your jawline. And it's as simple as that. We see it in all these videos.
- [59:38]
B
You're hiding your jawline with this.
- [59:39]
A
I know, I know. I may need to work on that one. But that's it. So the question is, can we mew. As funny as it sounds, yeah. Okay, so we make the face. So telling us the roof of the mouth, and then. That's it. If Dr. Rich can do it.
- [59:59]
B
Oh, I. I'll do anything with the kids. I learn from the kids all the time. Like, a kid will come in with AirPods in.
- [60:05]
A
Yeah.
- [60:05]
B
I'll say, can I listen to what you're listening to? You know, and we'll talk about it and you know, it might be like gangster rap or something, right. And then smack that up and you know, and I say to you know, a 16 year old girl, girl, really? How does it make you feel to think about it? And she said, oh, I just like music, I like the beat. And then I say, how about your 14 year old sister? Oh, no, no, she shouldn't listen to. This is bad stuff. Right. We will do more for other people than we will do for ourselves. And we will have more insight for other people than we will have for ourselves. Wow. I'll mute with you anytime you want to hear something. Really interesting thing. The original mewing, the one that cats do.
- [60:48]
A
Okay.
- [60:49]
B
Cats only do it with humans. Ah. They will only do that to communicate their needs to humans.
- [60:57]
A
Like the meowing.
- [60:58]
B
Yeah.
- [60:59]
A
Huh.
- [61:00]
B
Isn't that weird? I had a whole discussion with another scientist about this back and forth because, because one I was talking about purring. And one of the really interesting things about purring is it not only happens when they're feeling, you know, they're sitting on your lap and they're feeling good and they also do it when they're hurt. And there's actually research that shows that the vibration frequency actually heals bones faster. Wow. Isn't that cool?
- [61:34]
A
I was thinking the social element, but
- [61:38]
B
it's all mixed together, isn't it? You know, I mean, in many ways purring is I'm happy, I want to make you happy. I want to help you by purring next to you on your lap or whatever. Wow. There's all kinds of interesting, fun things in the world, you know, and you know, one of the great things about my job is I'm learning every day. I get to learn new stuff and I learn it from the kids more than anybody else because they're more alert, they're more into it than us jaded adults.
- [62:09]
A
Yeah. If you're talking to someone in tech, making a tech product product, 10 seconds with them, what would you say?
- [62:14]
B
Create what you would create for your own child.
- [62:18]
A
Exactly. Yeah, exactly.
- [62:20]
B
Yeah. One of the perhaps apocryphal stories out there is that Steve Jobs never let his kids have iPads.
- [62:27]
A
Right? Yeah, sure.
- [62:28]
B
Whether or not it's true, there are a lot of people in Silicon Valley that send their kids to Waldorf schools. There are some elements of truth to this, tech free schools. But yeah, what's really important is for them to understand that it is more than just selling something or making something cool. They have a profound effect on individuals and on society at large. I had A really interesting experience. I was asked to do a keynote for the Roblox Developers Conference a few years back. The Roblox developers are late teens to mid-20s. And these kids are making millions of bucks. Right?
- [63:10]
A
Robux and bugs. I said Robux. Sorry.
- [63:14]
B
Bad jokes and bugs.
- [63:15]
A
Bad joke. Bad joke.
- [63:16]
B
Right? Yeah. No, it's just for the insiders, half of the parents, anyway. So I'm talking to 600 some developers around the world. This is all virtual, of course. I start talking about this stuff in about 10 or 15 minutes in, it transforms from me teaching about the effects that gaming and the social interaction have on people. It turned into a giant global group therapy session. And I was hearing from these young guys and young women saying, I'm so lonely, I'm anxious all the time. I never touch grass. And it just gave them the freedom and the sense of trust and safety to say I'm hurting. I started with talking about the effects that what they created could have in positive as well as negative ways on those who use it. They really empathize with it as how it affects me. And, you know, maybe that's the most valuable thing I could have done for them, which is not just touch their minds, but touch their hearts and, and, and their gut. Ultimately, we can know a lot of stuff, and a lot of people in the tech world know a lot of stuff, including the stuff that, you know, it can harm. But until this gets translated to healing.
- [64:42]
A
Yeah, it's that heart, that human element.
- [64:44]
B
Exactly.
- [64:46]
A
Well, if you're looking for a guide to raising a child in the tech world or to just living in a tech world, I could not recommend this book more. Dr. Rich, thank you. I could go on for hours. I have so many questions that you ask, but I know you have other places to go, so thank you so much.
- [65:03]
B
Well, thank you for spreading the word. And. And you're part of the effort too. None of us can do this alone. We all need each other. And be hopeful. Right. And remember to have fun. If we're not having fun, it's really not worth doing.
- [65:23]
A
Come on. That's it.